Do More with Printers to Help Improve Productivity
When small businesses have a major printing job to tackle, most turn the task over to the neighborhood print shop. Yet for many companies, that can be a costly decision, especially when you consider:
- The quality and speed of personal and small business printers continue to improve
- Printers are more affordable now than they've ever been
- Beyond producing top quality documents rapidly, many printers can handle multiple functions, such as faxing, copying and scanning
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While professional print shops can offer advantages for jobs such as brochures, manuals, laminated materials, or posters, advancements in printer technology can make printing quality documents in-house faster and more affordable than ever before. Here are some of the advantages.
- Color copies that won't break the bank
Some big-name office supply stores and 24-hour print shops can charge up to one dollar per page of color printing, in addition to costly setup charges. Making 20 copies of a 10-page color presentation for tomorrow's meeting? That could be $200 out the window when you could have pulled together the project in-house using the latest color laser printer for pennies on the dollar.
- Quality Control
Ever drop something off at the print shop only to later realize there's a typo in the document? The shop has already printed your copies so now you'll have to pay double to make the correction. Or what about the mistakes the college kid working the graveyard shift at the print shop makes? You usually don't find out about those until it's too late. When you handle these projects in-house, your team is in charge and you have the ability to make last-minute changes.
- Networked and Managed Printing
It's simple to network your office printers so users can share printers and administrators can quickly and easily control printer traffic. To avoid using color ink or toner unnecessarily, you can assign color printing privileges to only those employees who most need them (e.g., to produce client-facing vs. internal documents).
To save time and money on future print jobs, it's important to consider the total cost of printing - hardware, ink or toner, paper, etc. Take a look at what you're currently printing on and what projects you're outsourcing. Review your printing expenses and print shop invoices. Once you've taken inventory of your printing projects, visit Dell's small business printer site for help in lowering overall printing expenses.
